The League of Nations and International Peace Flashcards
Who was the League of Nations created by?
Woodrow Wilson
What enforced the League of Nations?
The Treaty of Versailles
What were the aims of the LoN?
- stop wars
- encourage disarmament
- to make the world a better place by improving people’s working conditions and tackling disease
How was the LoN organised?
- an assembly which met annually + a council which met regularly to consider crisis
- Court of International Justice
- Committees such as International Labour Organisation + Health commitee for humanitarian work
What were the strengths of the League of Nations?
- to enforce its will, could offer: arbitration through International Court of Justice or apply trade sanctions against countries that went to war
- 58 members by 1930s
What were the weaknesses of LoN?
- set up by toV which everty nation hated
- aims too ambitious
- Germany, Russia and USA not members
- no army
- complicated organisation
- decisions to be unanimous
What were the successes of the LoN?
- 1920: League took home half a million prisoners of war from WW1
- 1921: Sweden and Finland accepted the League’s arbitration to give the Aaland Islands to Finland
- the League sent doctors to the Turkish refugee camp
- sent financial advisors to Austria and Hungary to rebuild their economies when they went bankrupt in 1921
- 1920s: set free 200,000 slaves from Sierra Leonne
- 1925: Greece obeyed the League’s orders to pull out of Bulgaria in 1925
What were the failures of the League?
-1921: Poland refused to withdraw from the capital of Lithuania - Vilna, which is what the League instructed them to do. The League could not do anything to combat the refusal
- 1923: Mussolini ignored League’s orders to pull out of Corfu, and made Greece pay Italy (the clear aggresors) money
- 1932: Japan conquered Manchuria. The League objected but were still powerless. Japan left the LoN
- 1932: Hitler announced that Germany was leaving the LoN
- 1935: Italy invaded Abysinnia, League officially condemned Italians, but France and Britain were caught making a secret agreement with Italy
What were the causes of the Manchuria crisis?
- Japanese economy in decline due to the Great Depression: no one was buying silk (their main export)
- military leaders and business owners called for military expansion to strengthen the country
- and to boost morale
Why was Manchuria an ideal option for the Japanese to invade?
- geographically close to Japan
- Japan already had industry and railway there
- history of confusion as to who owned Manchuria: China, Japan or Russia
When did the Manchuria crisis occur?
1931
Describe what happened during the Manchuria crisis
- 1905: Jp controls South Manchurian Railway
- September 1931: uses a railway explosion as an excuse to capture Mukden + take over Manchuria
- Japanese pretended to give them independence by establishing a puppet leader so they could control Manchuria
- LoN sent Lord Lytton to assess the situation and produce a report, which said that the Japanese were in the wrong and the league didn’t react to this, failed to stop the crisis
- Japan refused Lord Lytton’s report, left the LoN in 1933. Japan invaded China’s Jehol province
- 1936: Japan signed a treaty with Germany and invaded China freely in 1937
What were the consequences of the Manchuria crisis for the League of Nations?
- one of the League’s own members had ignored its moral condemnation and instructions to withdraw. Without an army, the LoN was powerless
- Japan was an important trading partner for many countries, making them reluctant to put sanctions/ stop selling weapons. This suggested that countries wouldn’t support the League if it was against their best interests. This was worsened by the Depression as countries wanted to focus on their own economies
- Countries unwilling to take military action: unpopular and expensive
- League’s failure to at showed dictators like Hitler the obvious weaknesses of the League
What were the causes of the Abyssinian Crisis?
- italy had been defeated by Abyssinia in 1896 - Italians wanted revenge
- Success would divert people’s attention from the depression and boost Mussolini’s popularity
- Mussolini dreamed of making Italy a great empire again, and had seen Japan succeed in Manchuria in 1931. This gave him more confidence to attack Abyssinia
- natural resources abundant in Abyssinia
When did Abyssinia defeat Italy previously?
1896